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The Bosket Family And The American Tradition Of Violence By Fox Butterfield

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All God’s Children: the Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence by Fox Butterfield explains the story of Willie Bosket and his family. Butterfield explains why he feels that Willie Bosket is the most violent criminal in the history of the New York Correctional system. Willie has committed more than two thousand crimes and of those crimes he has been convicted of two murders. He is currently serving three consecutive life sentences with 70 years of solitary confinement in a special cell created just for him. In a interview, Butterfield says “He's kept in a kind of Plexiglas cage. The iron bars are covered over with extra heavy Plexiglas so he can't throw anything out or bite his guards. He's not allowed to have books, newspapers, …show more content…

Because of this, whites in South Carolina had become the richest people in North America. With the great amount of slaves in this area, violence was needed in order to make sure slaves would not fight back. This made both the slaves and the slave masters more violent in the process. Ruben Bosket was the father to Aaron Bosket, Ruben was purchased as a slave by a planter named Thomas Bauskett. Thomas had purchased this slave for his son John who owned 221 slaves. Ruben would be a slave for John Bauskett from 1834 to 1852 until John decided to sell his slaves and plantations. Because Bauskett was the first master Ruben could remember he would take the last name which would eventually turn into Bosket. Ruben was sold to the Edgefield County resident name Francis Pickens who was a wealthy planter. He believed himself to be a good master and treated his slaves relatively well. Here Ruben would marry another slave named Carolina Vaughn and they eventually had children, one of which was Aaron. Aaron was sold to a man named Alfred Dearing, who was also a resident of Edgefield, at the age of ten and would never see his mother or father again. The violence at this plantation was much heavier and Aaron would see slaves whipped to death. Whites were not punished for killing their slaves, however, crimes committed by slaves were punished incredibly harsh. The honor code started to breed violence among African-Americans; all they had was honor, as they had no possessions so slaves often fought one another brutally and had so much anger kept up inside them due to their

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